Is Social Media a Waste of Time?

Robert Wynne
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Most PR professionals and small businesses constantly search for the magic social media app. Like Ponce de Leon’s quest for the fountain of youth, it’s folly. There’s no magic click that makes reporters read your pitch and write stories about you or your client. For the majority of public relations activities, specifically media relations, social media is a waste of time.

Waste of time? Hipsters wearing pork pie hats, ironic T-shirts and skinny jeans at coffee shops from West Hollywood to Austin to Brooklyn have just spit out their soy lattes with low fat foam all over their I-pads and dropped their smart phones.

PhDs at billion-dollar research firms are revising their algorithms and texting their marketing departments to counter this argument with new catch-phrases, but it’s all in vain.

Looking back at the top PR accomplishments from the past year, I can’t think of one major placement or event appearance facilitated by Facebook, Twitter, Google+, FourSquare, Pinterest or anything similar.

For a law firm, we placed a real estate attorney on the cover of Super-Lawyers Rising Stars, got three attorneys in a major publication for the Top 100 in their practice area, placed an entertainment attorney on CNBC (TV and website) and obtained many quotes in Reuters, Wall Street Journal and other media. For a rare earths manufacturer, we got them quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP and dozens of other places, placed them on a panel for a strategic metals summit for the State of Alaska and got them interviewed on Bloomberg TV. A spiritual firm countered a false report from the French government that was featured on the BBC and Reuters with a nice retraction (at the front) in a big story on the Huffington Post, and wrote a few bylined articles for spiritual publications.

These placements occurred thanks to old-fashioned contacts made in person, online, or making new friends with reporters. Most PR pros and small businesses would be better off kicking off their PR efforts old school. More face time, less Facebook. Meet reporters in person, go to events, participate in seminars, pick up the phone, email reporters and compliment them on previous stories and make suggestions on how you can help them with future articles.

There’s only so many hours in the day. You can spend time meeting reporters, crafting your message and getting placements in major media or your local publication, or you can type the keyboard for hundreds of hours hoping someone “Likes” your brilliant post on Facebook or follows your wickedly awesome tweets on Twitter.

Media relations is simple -- not easy, but simple. You find the story from your client that’s newsworthy on its own or attach them to a trend or breaking news and get your clients in the magazine, newspaper, TV, website or other publication. Compared to advertising, it’s earned media instead of paid media, and it carries more credibility.

Sometimes, social media can backfire. As Andreas Kluth, West Coast Correspondent from the Economist said in an earlier column, “I don’t like being contacted by PR people on Facebook or my personal blog (unless it is for private matters, including the book, “Hannibal and Me.”). In fact, it amazes me that there are PR people that don’t have the intuition to know that already. If they see me picnicking on a Sunday in the park with my family, would they come over, sit down on our blanket and pitch me a press release? Online, it is the same thing. I think good old-fashioned manners very much apply. Know the context.”

Rick Newman, Chief Business Correspondent for US News & World Report, says "To me it’s like social media represents all these new forms of information, but all roads lead to email. Why not send anything to email anyway. You might spend about five seconds on every email that comes in, if that. If you get a bad pitch on Facebook or LinkedIn it’s a lot more objectionable."

There’s a great explanation of traditional PR outreach vs. social media outreach on the website PR Online. “Social media present challenges, not the least because they break down traditional categories of audiences – employees, customers, shareholders, says James L. Horton. “The public and universal nature of social media means all audiences can read communications intended for any one audience. One can no longer compartmentalize audiences and messages. Matrices of targets and themes have become a blob with undefined connections and gaps.”

Horton says clients may value traditional media a bit more. “Because of fragmentation, social media present a Return-On-Investment problem. One may put in a lot of work reaching influentials for little result. Will a client be happy to know you spent three hours to get a mention in a blog versus the same three hours to get a mention in The Wall Street Journal? Effort expended in social media may not work out in cost-per-thousand terms. One has to think in cost-per-influential terms – reaching the right audience, no matter how small it might be. The closest analog to social media are trade media readers are self-selected. If there are only 100 readers but they are the right 100, that is success.”

Good luck finding the right 100 influencers. You can be one of 30,000 followers in social media vying for their attention, or you jump to the front of the line with an influential story in the media.

Social media can be effective for media relations for crisis communications. When someone blasts you online in the comments section of a major news site, or disseminates damaging information about you or your client, you can respond in real time. Social media is also good for secondary purposes such as research and competition analysis, finding reporters on Twitter and LinkedIn (and contacting them at their work email address), and posting your media placements after they’ve run.

Not everyone agrees that Old School PR beats New School. And some of the dissent comes from people who don’t blog all day about Radiohead and Deadmau5 while slamming lattes at the coffee shop.

“If you're using Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media solely for broadcasting purposes, you're not getting your time or money's worth,” says Neal Rodriguez, an Internet marketer and web developer based in Queens, NY. “They are community building tools; would you jump on the phone with somebody and not let them talk? As you pointed out, you use Facebook and Twitter as research tools. They are great platforms for identifying what type of content members of your target market are eager to consume. You could perform queries of targeted keywords describing your product or service or issues involving your business or industry, and you'll see what people are posting on their respective social media feeds.”

Image via CrunchBase

Rodriguez is a rare breed, as his skills in driving traffic to clients’ websites can augment story distribution. Not everyone can do this. Sometimes he generates original stories. “Facebook and Twitter doesn't constitute social media as a whole,” Rodriguez says. “There are thousands of social networks that could be used to communicate with your target market. I launched some of my most profitable campaigns using social news aggregators like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. In November of 2009, I campaigned Adweek's Best Commercials of the 2000s on Digg.com - and through some blogger outreach."

If you’re an established brand like AdWeek, the Pittsburgh Steelers or Pepsi, you’ve got name recognition and emotional connections to millions of fans, a huge advantage on social media (and other platforms.) If Pepsi announces a new vitamin-packed cherry cola, expect a lot of hits. If the Steelers trade wide receiver Mike Wallace for a top draft pick, the Twitterverse screams and spikes. But if you’re opening a new Smoothie shop in Plano, Texas, don’t count on thousands of fans liking your page or following you your first week. Unless you come up with a killer PR pitch that gets you on local TV and the front page of the Dallas Morning News.

Facebook can be fun, but nothing beats the impact of the legitimate, third-party validation of the major news media. I’ll bet you a dozen pork pie hats I’m right.